The One Question About Ebola That Nobody Can Seem To Answer

How in the world is it possible that more than 170 health workers have been infected by the Ebola virus? That is the one question about Ebola that nobody can seem to answer. The World Health Organization is reporting this as a fact, but no explanation is given as to why this is happening. We are just assured that Ebola “is not airborne” and that getting infected “requires close contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person”. If this is true, then how have more than 170 health workers caught the disease? These workers are dressed head to toe in suits that are specifically designed to prevent the spread of the virus. So how is this happening? I could understand a handful of “mistakes” by health workers, but this is unlike anything that we have ever seen in the history of infectious diseases. These health workers take extraordinary precautions to keep from getting the virus. If it is spreading so easily to them, what chance is the general population going to have?

Overall, more than 1,700 people have been officially infected and more than 900 people have officially died so far. But an official from Samaritan’s Purse says that the real numbers are probably far, far higher…

Ken Isaacs, the vice president of Program and Government Relations for Samaritan’s Purse, painted an even bleaker picture. According to the World Health Organization, West Africa has counted 1,711 diagnoses and 932 deaths, already, which could represent only a small fraction of the true number. “We believe that these numbers represent just 25 to 50 percent of what is happening,” said Isaacs.

In a six-hour meeting with the president of Liberia last week, Isaacs said workers from Samaritan’s Purse and SIM watched as the “somber” officials explained the gravity of the situation in their countries, where hundreds lie dead in the streets. “It has an atmosphere of apocalypse,” Isaacs said of the Liberia Ministry of Health’s status updates. “Bodies lying in the street…gangs threatening to burn down hospitals. I believe this disease has the potential to be a national security risk for many nations. Our response has been a failure.” Isaacs says that the epidemic is inciting panic worldwide that, in his opinion, may soon be warranted. “We have to fight it now here or we’re going to have to fight it somewhere else.”

The recent surge in the number of cases has stretched all capacities to the breaking point. Supplies of personal protective equipment and disinfectants are inadequate. The outbreak continues to outstrip diagnostic capacity, delaying the confirmation or exclusion of cases and impeding contact tracing.

Some treatment facilities are overflowing; all beds are occupied and patients are being turned away.

Like I have said before, this has the potential to become the greatest health crisis that any of us have ever seen.

Up until this point, the outbreak has been primarily limited to Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

But now it is starting to pop up in more countries around Africa.

For example, the number of confirmed cases in Nigeria has reached ten…

Nigeria on Monday confirmed a new case of Ebola in the financial capital Lagos, bringing the total number of people in the country with the virus to 10.

Health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said the latest confirmed case was a female nurse who came into contact with a Liberian-American man, Patrick Sawyer, who died of Ebola in a Lagos hospital on July 25.

In addition to Sawyer, another nurse who had contact with him died last week, while seven other people have been confirmed to have the virus in the city, he added.

Rwanda’s health officials have placed a man suspected of suffering from Ebola in isolation at King Faisal Hospital Kigali. A statement by the Ministry of Health released on Sunday indicates that the patient had been tested with results still expected. Samples from the suspected case have been sent for testing to an international accredited laboratory, and results will be available in 48 hours, the statement said. The suspected case is a European medical student, according to the statement. It is the first suspected Ebola case in Rwanda since the outbreak of the virus in West Africa. The government urged the public to remain calm and vigilant, as the ministry is closely monitoring the situation.

All the preventive measures needed in line with national standards are already in place, including surveillance systems and emergency management systems, it assured, adding “Health workers have been trained across the country and are vigilant.” This will enable timely detection, notification and appropriate management of any suspected cases to safeguard Rwandans, the statement concluded.

Over in Ghana, a man that just died is being tested for the Ebola virus…

Ghana may be recording its first case of Ebola if tests on the blood samples of a Burkinabe man suspected to have died of Ebola proves positive. The man who was rushed to the Bawku Presby Hospital in the Upper East Region from Burkina Faso, died on arrival. The Medical Director at the Hospital, Dr Joseph Yaw Manu, who confirmed the incident to Citi News, said they sent the blood samples for testing because the man was brought in showing symptoms of Ebola. In an interview with Citi News, Dr. Manu said the patient was bleeding from his nostrils which raised their suspicion he may have died of the Ebola disease. Dr. Manu said they are awaiting the results from the blood sample test to verify the cause of death. He gave the assurance that the hospital is prepared to battle the disease. This is the fourth suspected case of Ebola reported in Ghana; two in Kumasi, one in Accra and now the Upper East Region.

Benin has reported two cases of the deadly Ebola virus in the west African country. Health Ministry official Aboubacar Moufiliatou said that a man suspected to have contracted the virus had died. “Fortunately, blood samples have been taken from the deceased patient to examine if his death was linked with Ebola,” Moufililatou told the state television Thursday night. He said another man has been quarantined after showing symptoms of the deadly virus after returning from the Nigerian city of Lagos. “Blood tests from the suspected case will be conducted in laboratories approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) to confirm or deny the infection,” he said. The WHO has declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to be an “international public health emergency” as the virus reportedly continues to spread through the region in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. According to the latest WHO report, Ebola has killed 932 people in West Africa. The Ebola virus, a contagious disease for which there is no known treatment or cure, can be transmitted to humans from wild animals and also spreads through contact with the body fluids of an infected person or someone who has died of the disease. Medical doctors say common symptoms of Ebola include high fever and headaches, followed by bleeding from openings in the body. If the cases turn out to be Ebola, this would be the fifth country in Africa where the virus has spread.

We are quickly getting to the point where it will become impossible to contain this virus.

Health officials in North Carolina said on Sunday they will require missionaries and others coming home after working with people infected with Ebola in Africa to be placed in quarantine.

The quarantine is set to last for three weeks from the last exposure to someone infected in the West African Ebola outbreak, which is centred in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the officials said.

Missionaries from the North Carolina-based Christian aid groups SIM USA and Samaritan’s Purse have been working to help combat the world’s worst outbreak of the disease. Two of the relief workers, Dr Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, contracted the disease and are being cared for at Emory University hospital in Georgia.

Why couldn’t those individuals just be quarantined over there an extra three weeks in a safe area and then come home?

All it takes is one sick person. Once the disease gets here and starts spreading, there isn’t much that we can do about it. There is no cure for Ebola, and according to the New York Times it is going to be quite a while before one is potentially available…

The drugs that could potentially treat those already infected and the vaccines to protect healthy people from infection are all in the earliest stages of testing. And even if they do pass muster in clinical trials, they cannot be produced in large quantities quickly enough to stem the widening epidemic anytime soon.

Because they administer to someone with Flu like symptoms and don't know it's Ebola when coughed on or saliva from thermometer, or helping to vomit. They probably, mostly, are not the health workers who KNOW they're working with Ebola and therefore are suited up and taking precautions.

The 1918 flu pandemic killed an estimated 50 - 100 million people. Will Ebola be worse than that, given modern medical science? Maybe Mother Nature decided to finally do something about the overpopulation problem, since conventional wars take too long nowadays.

They're all getting it because it's transmitted through the air. Aerosol, floats in the air, highly virulent, feasts upon anything close to flesh and blood, almost as if it were conscious, and vicarious. It is airborne and by more than a fucking sneeze. That's why.Sneeze, sweat, fart, poop, piss and it's all over and sits and waits on the wall, the floor, dirt, toilet seat, towel, glass, you name it.

First Ebola came for the frail
and I did nothing
because I was not frail.
Then Ebola came for the sex workers
and I did nothing
because I was not a sex worker .
Then Ebola came for the careless
and I did nothing
because I was not careless.
Then Ebola came for me
and there was no one left
for me to give it to.

My money is still on defective hazmat gear. Who made it and where were those “protective suits” made? Remember the Challenger? A simple defective o-ring caused billions in damages and many dead. Look how many defective cars at GM....and the list goes on. It's only human to makes mistakes or have a faulty piece of equipment that's stamping those suits out. Or how about a disgruntled emploer with a safety pin at the hazmat gear place?

Seems obvious to me if you assume the other things are facts: that is transmitted by fluids and/or airborne and it’s highly contagious. I’m puzzled they have not investigated this aspect yet and tested those fashionable body suits.

In the villages where this used to happen, the way they let it burn out was...

By burning it out! Once you had EBOLA, they sent you into your hut, if you emerge, you are shot. You are supposed to come out in say 4 or 5 days. After that time, they yell, if you respond, you survived. No response? The hut is burnt down.

Why are we holding these people in hospital and taking vitals and shit? Repeatedly exposing multiple people? And the rooms are re-used, never mind equipment?

this gives me an idea for a great movie. You see humans are almost completely wiped out when an ape virus mutates and spreads to humans. Then the apes take over the world. A few white dudes (and of course a couple of hot chicks) survive and try to escape from the "Apes of the Planet" Yeah !

If it is airborne, and they don't have a cure already (or one that will be made available to "ordinary" people), the 30% will rise significantly because of lack of basic resources. 1st world hospitals and infrastructure would fail almost overnight if even 1% of the population came down with the virus. Who in their right mind is going to go to work to man the coal plant, nuclear plant, hospital, phone center, etc?

The one thing missing from every zombie/virus/other end-of-civilization movie is what happens to the nuke plants that are not manned. If the shit ever really hits the fan, it won't be the way Hollywood suggests.

Tee hee....If left on and the cooling generators run out of gas (like when they flood) woe is begonzo...But then again, any new mutation via high radiation will likely kill the Annanuki when they come back for the rest of their gold, so no big deal.

And maybe the radiation will kill the virus. All part of their brilliant plan, I'm sure, including Blankfein growing two heads that will fight each other to the death while Dimon watches. It will be a helluva show.

Any developed-world nuke plant has control rods in place that have to be actively held up out of the cory. Any hiccup and they simply fall into the core due to gravity (these things are heavy), stopping the reaction completely. You could simply leave any nuke plant alone, they should stop working without any consequences. Except when sabotage is involved, e.g. as happened in the Belgian nuke plant a couple of days ago.

If only there was an overcapacity of high rise buildings built near rail corridors in an incipient urban ghetto environment to house the survivors that would allow the hinterlands to wild in some type of planned fashion....

Stacking - I never could subscribe to Malthusian ideology and it should never be promoted as it has proven false. I view more shortage by supply-side economics than real shortage but I'll admit your point is probably accurate about abundance if a die-off occurred.

If 1/3 of the population died between now and say 2020 what you would see is labor shortage. A guy digging a ditch would be worth $30 an hour. So sure if you were one of the 2/3rds you would have abundance. A rebalancing of capital and labor.

The survivors would be a lot more salty and shrewd like after Great Generation after the depression and WW2. Such would not be so easily controlled and become much more cynical and less trusting of institutions. If a die-off was part of a conspiracy by a few in power it would backfire as labor would be more expensive and the people less easily controlled.

A third of the population dies off and you're discussing wages? What does any of this have to do with the population being easier or harder to control? Your thesis is that if we have less people, citizens are harder to control? Are only the smartest going to survive in this scenario? The most proactive?

You must be an academic... probably econ or finance... something where "all else equal" is used. The die off wouldn't exist in a bubble... and decreases in the population would cause significant political changes that would likely render your scenario unrealistic or, at the very least, make the guessing game worthless.

not sure what you mean by "malthusian ideology", as i've never read malthus. is there an ideology? as far as i know, he merely suggested that exponential growth cannot continue indefinitely on a finite planet, which seems to be common sense. like bacteria growing exponentially in a petri dish, until they exhaust the food supply and a die-off occurs. we humans like to think we are special and different and the laws of nature don't apply to us, but i'm not so sure that's the case.

and i'm not sure what you mean by "proven false", can you elaborate on that? his writings are still being debated, i don't believe any side of the debate can honestly say, we've been proven right and the other guys are proven wrong.

The life of mankind will even be more manageable if the conditions stated at the GEORGIA GUIDESTONES can be realized as wished by some tribe... :-)

"The Georgia Guidestones are a huge stonehenge-like arrangement of granite slabs erected in the early 1980s for mysterious reasons; the persons who commissioned the stones are unknown. Carved into their sides are statements in several languages to be used, presumably, as societal directives in the context of some sort of post-apocalyptic future-a reboot disk for human civilization."

you're mistaken about georgia guidestones being "commandments", they are not, they are merely some reasonable suggestions. i've read them over, they are reasonable ideas, there's nothing sinister there, unlike what the inforwars/naturalnews/chemtrail crowd would have you believe.

it's like, "ooh! we don't know who built it! it must be an evil conspiracy!"

Hope it all seems so very reasonable when a fountain of blood the size of Old Faithful sprays out of your ass. It's all so very "reasonable" when it is happening to some skinny in some far off country.

It depends on whether a healthy diet or an experienced immune system is a better advantage against EVD. If living in filth is an advantage, a disporportionate amount of Asians will come out the other side, while lots of rich white people will be liquified.

If half the world's population dies from Ebola, I bet another 40% dies in the chaos easily. Riots, panic, starvation will kick in pretty fast once, say, a tenth of a city is sick and a couple percent have died.

Actually, Ebola takes out the young, because their immune systems overreact to this virus. The lungs produce too much fluid so they "drown". So far, older people with a normal immne system - and previous infections that provide some sort of protection - have a higher chance of survival.

"And who takes blood samples from a corpse just to make sure it's Ebola?"

Nobody. It is being reported that bodies are being buried or burned without ever confirming it was ebola, and without being documented as an ebola death (ie. the new cases in many places are not being counted)

"Liberia's government is cremating the remains of possible Ebola victims without testing whether they have the virus, leaving relations unaware if they may be at risk of the disease as well...such is the chaos in Liberia's health service, ministry of health undertakers are being instructed simply to take them directly for cremation.

But Ebloa HAS been recognized as airborn by the CDC.
From the CDC web page updated on August 7. It says Ebola may be transmitted via "casual contact" with infected individuals. Buried in the footnotes, the CDC defines "casual contact" as:
1 Casual contact is defined as a) being within approximately 3 feet (1 meter) or within the room or care area for a prolonged period of time (e.g., healthcare personnel, household members) while not wearing recommended personal protective equipment (i.e., droplet and contact precautions–see Infection Prevention and Control Recommendations); or b) having direct brief contact (e.g., shaking hands) with an EVD case while not wearing recommended personal protective equipment (i.e., droplet and contact precautions–see Infection Prevention and Control Recommendations). At this time, brief interactions, such as walking by a person or moving through a hospital, do not constitute casual contact.What they are saying here is that Ebola is airborne. Previously they said it could only be transmitted via direct contact with body fluids of infected people. I am not at all sure why this is not being reported widely with great alarm. Please see the link. http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/hcp/case-definition.html

Why would Jamaica, Cuba or any other country be interested in hosting Americans poetntially carrying the Ebola virus?

They could probably be quarantined in Guantanamo Bay because the US still occupies the territory. Cuba may not actually mind that, if the infection spreads among the US Marines stationed there and half of them end up dead.

Maybe. At very least it is airborne. Many have admitted it so far... but MSM and .gov don;t want to cause panic. Actually, I bet MSM would tTEMPORARILY see a huge spike in ratings shoudl this thing go parabolic.

Hypothesis: Transmission of disease via insect vector, possibly a tick. If that is the case, burn all of the infected person's clothing and spray the patient with broad spectrum insecticide (Malathion).

Advantage?!?!?!?!It is a virtual certainty that some Muzzie ISILst, believing that he is carrying out his duties under the 5 fingers (pillars) of the Koran, has already been to an infected area, kissed corpses and the dying, traded spit, made it to Mexico and across an unprotected boundary that nobody can or will enforce and is alreday stumbling into movie theaters, malls and restaurants.If one of those God's Warriors for Peace thinks blowing his ass up with a bomb vest is OK, then this shit would be FUCKING GLORIOUS

Reading that just made my eyes bleed. Fuck FUCK...what if they are in grocery stores fondling fruits and veggies, smearing snot on ATM's, sneezing on gas pumps? Shit they could literally infest hundreds of places every day. They could stand next to an AC inlet to a large building and just spit on it. They could lick every public water fountain they walk by. Hell, they could just pull down their pants and let loose into public wells or water towers. This is SICK SHIT...FUCK YOU for my ensuing nightmares. fuck FUCK

I think we are set for another hellacious winter, what with an average July temp of 71 degrees here in Indianapolis. Record low temps.
Nothing like the cold to make everyone huddle indoors. Snuggle up.
Ebola is going to dig that.

I think someone on here recently projected the current numbers out and it boiled down to a very loose bloody stool November. Awesome. Black Plague Friday, anyone? I want a gas mask, Santa!

It appears that everything the "authorities" and MSM will be feeding us in the way of real info from here on out is pure horseshit. You won't know how bad things are until your neighbor is shitting blood on your front lawn.

Could solve the governments unfunded liability problem (social security, medicare, food stamps, unemployment insurance, etc.). Perhaps it's the elites wishes to depopulate the world also. I have no doubt that it has been weaponized, neither do I doubt that TPTB are evil enough to unleash something like this upon the world.

thank you. like sars, although that just flat out dissappeared after we all were told a plane contaminated was landing in toronto. bird flu of 1918 was most likely aspirin overdoseing, to go with the verdun slaughter. thanks bayer !

How convenient, there is a program about the black death on tv. So let me get this straight, all countries in Africa have closed their borders/flights, but I can still get a direct flight from West Africa to Europe or NY?

Well, you have a point. I have been on many horse camping trips and observed, in horror, several people using portable water filters to eliminate Giardia from the streams. As they removed the filter they clearly contaminated their water. They had no concept of sterile technique. I often pointed out how to do it properly except in one case where the man was being a major asshole at the campground, I felt as good swig of Giardia is what he needed.

PPE ( personal protection equipment) is only effective if used properly. I have a strong suspicion this is playing a role in this outbreak unless told otherwise. Perhaps we need to focus of the rate of Ebola or other VHF transmission in BSL 4 labs due to breeches of suits as a comparison.

Accidental exposure, even for experienced and well trained microbiologists, is still plausible.The Soviet Union had a program to weaponize Marburg, another BSL 4 hemorhagic fever virus, and eventually succeeded, but not before it claimed the lead research scientist, Nikolai Ustinov.

FWIW, I know relative humidity makes people sweat more, which can't help, and certainly contributes to the spread of viral hemorrhagic Yellow Fever (and malaria) this time of year (via mosquitoes who themselves need humidity to survive and thrive).

On the other hand, cholera is most certainly not "airborne" and yet the rainy season has managed to help infect a couple thousand people in just a couple months, right down the road from ebola land, where they have more important issues right now than accurately tracking, reporting and treating cholera and malaria cases, but cholera isn't taking a toll on healthcare workers.

"If this is true, then how have more than 170 health workers caught the disease? These workers are dressed head to toe in suits that are specifically designed to prevent the spread of the virus. So how is this happening?"

Health workers in the rural clinics where it first showed up would be in regular clothing.

Not being "racist," just pointing out a secure hospital facility in Europe or USA is order of magnitude different than a secure hospital in Africa.

Let's not delude ourselves into believing the US CDC workers have the exact same suits as those at the Liberian Health Ministry, nor let's believe the support staff that are suppose to keep areas sterile are of the same quality as Johns Hopkins.

When heterosexual American or German medical providers start bleeding out the rectum, then I'll be concerned.

@mastersnark- You are very wrong on this. Most American hospitals are also ill prepared for this should Ebola get here. I know. I have 30+ years in hospital experience- including having gone through the original outbreak ohf HIV patients before we even knew what we were dealing with. I can remember starting IVs on people and drawing blood before gloves were standard practgice. Today, that would be reason to lose your job- HIV, HBV, HCV, HVA, MRSA, GAS, ESBL and on and on... Having seen healthcare facilities that use paper mesh gowns for contact precautions, gloves so thin that they rip while in use frequently (my current facility is guilty here) and half assed housepeepers doing half assed disinfections of rooms between patients, I am VERY worried. In fact, I will retire when this reaches my part of the USA. Few to no USA hospitals are anywhere near as ready as you think. We do NOT have the resources or skill levels of a CDC facility. This country might be able to handle 20 cases as a whole at that level. You should be very concerned. I am.

Unlike Ebola, staph LIVES on the human body. Have you ever had a pimple? Guess what, that's staphylococcus aureus, or MSSA. Nosocomial infections are common with staph and gnrs. They are both harbored by the millions on and in our bodies. Hospitals are populated by sick individuals on multiple antibiotics which selects for resistance. They shed these organisms in the hospitals and take them into the community and infect others including their pets. Every time you touch a doornob or other fomite containing these organisms and touch any mucus membrane you have inoculated yourself. You may or may not get an infection or just be a carrier.

The infected brought here AREN'T being treated at CDC facilities or Level 4 centers. For some reason.

They are being treated in regular hospitals. They just put them in an "isolated ward".

Are they delivering meds and food and removing waste via drone? I don't fucking think so. I wouldn't count yourself safe just yet.
And if German and American providers do start bleeding out the ass, you'll be more than concerned. You'll be fucked proper.
That's going on the huge assumption that you'd even find out about spread..stateside. Which you absolutely won't.

There was a report by a US Border Official a few weeks ago who said, that this is the FIRST case of an Ebola outbreak that has started in the Cities not the jungle. Every other outbreak has started in the jungles and made its way into the city.

He said, "This is almost like it was planted in 3 African cities on purpose!"